mediaprettyhttps://mediapretty.wordpress.com
Paula Hepburn, profile and works Fri, 18 Aug 2017 04:46:38 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/42436b59e745065c4944cb65e40e4660?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngmediaprettyhttps://mediapretty.wordpress.com
Code-eh???https://mediapretty.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/code-eh/
https://mediapretty.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/code-eh/#respondTue, 28 Jul 2015 17:06:44 +0000http://mediapretty.wordpress.com/?p=196Continue reading Code-eh???]]>When working in audio I feel pretty comfortable working with WAV, raw, PCM, MP3 or whatever compressed/uncompressed file gets thrown my way, and life was relatively neat rowing down the bitstream of audio format. But when I dared dip my toe into the perplex and competitive world of video postproduction it was time to buckle up and ride out the storm for a new, ever changing course of elements.

Here are some basic explanations that I hope can get you through the confusing world of digital video and codec:

What is codec?

The basic explanation of codec is in the name:

Co- compress

Dec- to decompress.

A compressed algorithm reduces the file size by discarding and reusing information and decompression enables editing and display. Some common examples are Prores and h.624.

Containers formats

You’re probably more familiar with container formats then you think:

AVI (audio, video interleave) is a container known to many. It can contain many formats, but is commonly known for containing J-MPEG or DIVX.

QuickTime: A popular container format that works across many platforms including Linux, it was developed by apple, as opposed to the AVI Microsoft framework. This also carries many formats including the two above.

Bit depth

Basically used to represent the amount of colour used in an image, therefore the lower the bit depth the less colour-rage to chose from, with a higher bit depth meaning better resolution. This can make a difference between and clear and grainy piece of wok.

The example above shows 16 bit and 8 bit, although you can visibly see the difference it is mindful to note:

8 bit codec has of Red, Green, Blue information = 256

and

16 Bit codec has of Red, Green, Blue information = 65, 536

It is important to capture in a high bit depth to represent the wide colour range, and detail, for production.

Chroma subsampling

Basically used to define the amount of colour and luminance within and sample, usually for every four pixels.

Some examples are:

4:2:2 = meaning for every 4 pixels 2 chroma (colour) values are used and 4 luminance values are used.

4:1:1 = uses 1 chroma sample, with 4 luminance.

4:4:4= no subsampling at all

To put this into perspective, if we have a red and blue image the transition from one colour to the other will be repentant on the subsample:

4:2:2

4:4:4

Progressive Vs Interleaving

We all see 1080p or 1080i when we are recording or rendering our final product but do you know the difference? Firstly let’s take a look at the numbers, 1080 is the numbers represented in resolution, currently digital high definition TV has a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels, however how these pixels are displayed depends on the scanning of the images, this is where the letters come to play. P, stands for progressive, this form of scanning displays both the even and odd lines of information on screen at the same time. Interlaced video even and odd lines as separate fields therefore for a smoother capture of an action shot 1080p is always better.

]]>https://mediapretty.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/code-eh/feed/0video_encodingpkhepbit depth4:2:24:4:4Drone culture: Dexterous Vs Dangeroushttps://mediapretty.wordpress.com/2015/07/19/drone-culture-dexterous-vs-dangerous/
https://mediapretty.wordpress.com/2015/07/19/drone-culture-dexterous-vs-dangerous/#respondSun, 19 Jul 2015 18:20:51 +0000http://mediapretty.wordpress.com/?p=192Continue reading Drone culture: Dexterous Vs Dangerous]]>With drones quickly transforming from a military piece of equipment, a cheap and easily accessible toy you see rooming around the park, one thing to be certain, they have become a regular part of society. With the price range from approximately £49.00 to a whole heap of military cash near enough anyone can bag themselves a handy little Gopro and a reasonably new aspect to filming. Now I know what you’re thinking, new? This isn’t exactly the beginning of aerial filming techniques, which I appreciate, but it is the beginning of a whole new style of filming widely available to the general public. A community of unrestricted skateboarding, sports loving, animal watching, journalistic, perspective film makers. That trick, the arrangement, that comparison; now drones bring a new dimension to the amateur film maker and oh how we love it.

I was once walking along the side of Buckingham Palace gardens on my way to London Victoria when I spotted drone above the large exterior walls scouting the garden. One can assume this is a common practise by security to guard the palace from potential trespassers, which I’m sure is a difficult task. But this made me think, would this done need a camera facing upwards as well a downward to determine another drone isn’t following the security one? And who actually stated it belonged to the Palace itself?

There are no such drone Laws in place in the UK as of yet, but with the CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) struggling to control and identify a breach of privacy via platforms such as vine and YouTube, the boundaries will inevitably be pushed to breaking point. There are rules regulations around recreational drone manufacturing, with weight and height restrictions and with general social security laws one must adhere to the basic UK privacy laws. But as reported By Charles Arthur of The Guardian newspaper online (2nd, April, 2014), a man was convicted of dangerous use of a recreations drone that lost control near a nuclear marine facility.

Like most technical advances, such as social media, android phones, and droning one must take advantage of a progression creatively pushing the boundaries to new ‘heights’, and always be aware of that metaphorical wall of privacy.

Thanks for sticking with me, and in Terminator Genisys style I’m back!

I’d like to apologize for my 6 month absence, due to the passing of my father I decided to take a little time out of my technology based life to spend some well earned time off with the family.

Now I’m back and ready to talk about my next move in the digital world. So bare with me, as this next 6 months will be a packed stream of dissertation topics, job interest and experiences, with the occasional fun GIF or ident.

please feel free to message with feedback (good or bad, not trolling), and i will endeavour to write back.

Idents are a visual image or video used to identify a television broadcaster, production company or channel. They are short and unique; which gives them ample opportunity to be frequently used throughout programming, with maximum marketing potential. The key to multiple Idents is to maintain the identity of the logo/relatable image operating but with different stories/visuals taking place. E4 are distinguished in this field, with their unique and sometimes controversial E Stings. The channel even gave viewers the opportunity to create and submit their own E-stings, for a 2013 competition, which resulted in many winners having their works represented on the channel itself.

A recent example of a various idents has been BBC Two’s 50 year anniversary campaign showing past and present idents from the BBC archive:

From that look down memory lane, we can all distinguish at least one of these clever idents, which one could say signifies the idents success. This week I will be working on creating my own Idents, for this site and future video endeavours, so what this space.

]]>https://mediapretty.wordpress.com/2015/01/25/idents-small-indicators-with-significant-value/feed/0idents picpkhepidents new picAnalysis of Black Friday Parody (Artefact no.2)https://mediapretty.wordpress.com/2014/12/15/analysis-of-black-friday-parody-artefact-no-2/
https://mediapretty.wordpress.com/2014/12/15/analysis-of-black-friday-parody-artefact-no-2/#respondMon, 15 Dec 2014 16:41:25 +0000http://mediapretty.wordpress.com/?p=166Continue reading Analysis of Black Friday Parody (Artefact no.2)]]>My second attempt at a spreadable artefact came solely from the disappointing reception of my first video; things needed to change. I decided to use the concept a current trending topic, as this already exhibits huge amount of traffic, which would be a lot easier than starting a trend itself. Then, with a stroke of luck, came the relatively new phenomenon to the UK, gained a mass of media attention: Black Friday. This time I had to respond quick and with only 24 hours after Black Friday I had a parody published to YouTube; here are the reasoning and objectives for Black Friday 2014, Downfall parody:

The black Friday incentive

With Black Friday, 5th December “confirmed as the biggest online shopping day of the year in the UK for the first time”, accords to the Telegraph online. The media that surrounded the event and unfortunate behaviour of some of the British public took the media buy storm. Delving further into YouTube searches for black Friday on Google trends you can see not only a peak at December 2014, but at every December over the past 10 years:

Furthermore, making use of other black Friday popular searches could be advantages:

As spoke about in my initial post, the word ‘Friday’ itself has a popular search request on Fridays.

STEPPS

As stated in my initial post I demonstrated principles such as Triggers, Social currency and public to draw in public views and distribution.

Distribution

For this second piece of work I decided distribution would need to be taken more seriously so I decided to openly ‘pitch’ my work on well established social media groups. My preliminary publishes where to the usual media’s I use, such as Facebook and Twitter. Additionally using a direct share button on YouTube I was able to post my work on reddit:

Then after watching some rather hilarious videos on a popular facebook groups named ‘The manc’ Bible’ and ‘The Lad Bible’ I decided to share the video on any Black Friday related post on those groups, with the hope that the some of the combined 710,325 followers may pay attention:

Tags and Title

From my previous artefact, I discovered that tagging and title make a vast difference to finding the video on the internet, so I decided to tag the page with as many relatable words as possible :

A week later I had the idea to add another extremely exercised word into the tagging : ‘Kardashian’.

As the Kardashian family are a well known celebrity family with one member being known by the world wide press to of ‘broke the internet’ with some extreme photographs, courtesy of Vanity Fair’s Hollywood.

Although this can seem as misleading, it’s a trait many companies use to draw interest to a publication.

Analysis

The Black Friday 2014 Downfall parody has been active on YouTube for 2 weeks, 2 days and has received 76 views, and one share on Facebook:

The YouTube anylitics line graph above show the peak 36 views on the video on 30/11/2014, a day after publication and two days after ‘Black Friday’ itself. This is probably due to its media popularity at the time.

Anylitics also demonstrates that 44% of the video was watched from external websites, meaning facebook, reddit and twitter were responsible for nearly half the views.

The video was unsuccessful in spreading across a wide platform over its 16 day exposure, reasons for this may include:

Recognition– Black Friday is an even only participated in North America, Canada and UK. This could possibly hinder a world-wide search.

Films characteristics– The ‘downfall’ theme may of come across distasteful or even offensive to some viewers, although I did show this to several Jewish friends to check its suitability some people may of found it offensive.

Language– This was an English subtitles video, therefore reducing the viewers to an English reading audience.

Time– As you can see from the YouTube analytics the video was most popular around the time of Black Friday, and therefore interest for this video may of quickly been lost soon after the event was over.

Quantity– Although using many over-used tags could be advantageous it also opens the spectrum for searches; the increase in popularity results in more artefacts to search through. This means although using a ‘kardashian’ tag may of put the video into another matrix of popular words, the number of ‘Kardashian’ search results on youtube is huge:

]]>https://mediapretty.wordpress.com/2014/12/15/analysis-of-black-friday-parody-artefact-no-2/feed/0spreadpkhepBF trends 2004-2014related BF searches on YTredditmanc bibletags for black fridayveiws 72source traffickardashSpreadable media- Analysis of Monty the Penguin and friends (Video Artefact no.1)https://mediapretty.wordpress.com/2014/12/15/spreadable-media-analysis-of-monty-the-penguin-and-friends-video-artefact-no-1/
https://mediapretty.wordpress.com/2014/12/15/spreadable-media-analysis-of-monty-the-penguin-and-friends-video-artefact-no-1/#respondMon, 15 Dec 2014 13:02:36 +0000http://mediapretty.wordpress.com/?p=150Continue reading Spreadable media- Analysis of Monty the Penguin and friends (Video Artefact no.1)]]>As posted previously, my first attempt of spreadable media was my animal rights endeavour, using the popularity of the latest John Lewis Christmas advert featuring a penguin to high light the real problems with hunting and over-fishing in the Antarctic. Reason for making this film were on a personal level, however the method I chose to get the point across was using key spreadable media tools.

To decipher the reasoning for this short film further I will divide the film into its preliminary ideas and objectives:

The Big Idea

With the hype around the recent John Lewis Christmas advert featuring a rather endearing ‘Monty the penguin’. One can only appreciate the exhibit of John Lewis’ use of emotion, social currency and story-telling to create audience attention and distribution in order to sell a product. So why not use this audience following or one could say ‘trend’ to expose my own artefact.

As of 14/12/2014 ‘Monty the penguin’ official YouTube video has receive the following attention:

Time

With any trend, popularity is only sustained with social interest. As this interest generates from a Christmas advert some could say it would be short lived or even a fad as Henrick Vejlgaad explains in his ‘Trend forecasting and Trend process’.Therefore the key to attracting the same type of audience participation is to expose the artefact as quickly as possible after the John Lewis advert. As seen below Google trends :

Shows over a 90 day period the peak of web searches for ‘Monty the penguin’ was 06/11/2014 and the web search for this stayed popular through November, hence this was the time to act.

Title

The title was an issue I contemplated over for the whole of the spreadable experience, the first title I used for the video was as follows:

The reasons for this is I was worried John Lewis as a company would have the film shut down for negative portrayal of their company if I incorporated their name, then after a week of disappointing figures I took the step of involving John Lewis into the title, hoping it wasn’t too late before the John Lewis hype calmed down.

Tags

The tags for this film were picked, as shown below, in reference to what happened in the video, 2 weeks after the video was publishes these tags were changed to words relating more towards the John Lewis advert itself to gather traffic looking for that video.

Tags at publish:

Week 2:

Emotion

This was the first of the ‘STEPPS’ principles, as spoke about in a previous post, I exercised for this piece, basically pulling on the heart strings of my audience. I decided to arouse shock and sorrow from the audience, expecting this emotion to evoke further thinking and possibly discussion.

Social currency

The social currency principle take from my work was the music; Tom Odell is a current artist who made the music for the John Lewis advert, as an artist himself he has extreme popularity within the Charts and the ‘real love’ song itself made it to #7 in the official charts for downloads and streaming in the UK. The ‘real love’ song itself is a John Lennon cover and his version was chosen for the short film; 1. To keep the ‘real love’ theme, 2. As a tribute to John Lennon who as an advocate of peace and love.

Story

The short film does not exactly tell a story in the conventional way; with a beginning , middle and end, but it does however demonstrate the penguins lives before and after hunting which consequently transforms the narrative from happy to shocked/upset; giving the story value.

This short film was published on YouTube on 22/11/2014; I posted URL links to the video on facebook, Twitter, Instagram and my wordpress blog. Here is an analysis of the films progression over the last 3 weeks:

The anlytics taken off my youtube channel show only only 42 views, with a peak of ten views on the day of release. Although this is a disappointing figure the line chart does show that the video was view on other days by audiences in Germany and Singapore. As I personally haven’t given this URL to anyone in these countries, one can derive that they found it through other means such as tags and trend searches.

Reasons for the videos unsucessful reception can be due to several factors:

Psychological aspects

The video involves some scenes of violence and killing towards the animals, which were purposely used for the shock value. However this idea can also be seen as a reason to not watch the film itself. Researching some psychological aspects of watching television I’ve noticed this audience ‘psychological defence mechanism’ can be the cause of not watching something that displays violence, crime, murder etc. Emotions can be overwhelming and therefore a person uncomfortable with violence would be inclined to avoid the video.

Tags

As this was my first attempt at spreadable media I would like to indicate that inexperience of tag usage was a key issue with promotion of this video. Using tags such as ‘penguins’ ‘animal rights’ and ‘real love’, were possibly the weakest tags for this artefact. Two weeks after publish I changed the tags to ‘Monty the penguin’ ‘John Lewis’ ‘Tom Odell’, but at this stage the trend itself was not as popular and may of reduced in traffic.

Publicity

This item had the least personal publicity of the two artefacts, although I published the video twice on Facebook and seven times on Twitter, the prohibiting features of only using these social medias is followers are the only people who can view it. Although the video was like by followers causing the video to be present on their pages, the event did not really make much difference.

Quality of video

The film was 2 minutes 26 seconds, for some people browsing the internet this may be far too long to capture people’s attention. Also the subject of the film itself may not be of people taste.

Quantity of John Lewis related films

As I walked into university smug with the thought of jumping on the John Lewis ‘band wagon’ I was instantly informed by a another student someone else in the class had also made a parody of the same advert, which got me thinking, how much reproduction traffic would this popular advert attract?

According to YouTube when searching for ‘Monty the penguin’ 16,100 results appear:

This gives my video a 0.006211180124223603 % of being seen, without including video that have been paid to be fully promoted which is an option YouTube provide with a charge.

There were several characteristics I could have changed to promote this video a little more such as putting on reddit with 174 million visitors a month members. This was factor which prompted the use of reddit in my second artefact.

Overall this Video did not succeed in spreading over the internet within its 3 week presence, due to its lack of relatable tags,quanity of other relatable medias, quality and possibly its violent nature.

]]>https://mediapretty.wordpress.com/2014/12/15/spreadable-media-analysis-of-monty-the-penguin-and-friends-video-artefact-no-1/feed/0pkhepmonty veiwsnew monty trends1st name real lovename change real love1st tags real2nd tags real love42 veiwsresultsInserts Vs Auxiliarieshttps://mediapretty.wordpress.com/2014/12/14/inserts-vs-auxiliaries/
https://mediapretty.wordpress.com/2014/12/14/inserts-vs-auxiliaries/#respondSun, 14 Dec 2014 12:47:17 +0000http://mediapretty.wordpress.com/?p=146Continue reading Inserts Vs Auxiliaries]]>A few months ago I spoke about signal pathways in the studio, an entity that may frighten an audio novice, but contrary to belief makes sense with time and application. Most studio and MIDI interface users are familiar with the exploit of auxiliaries and inserts, nevertheless it is important to distinguish between the two, as I regularly see studio users mistake the two leading to major connection errors and ,shall we say, un-altered audio.

Inserts

Essentially, an insert diverts a (selected) signal and applies a chosen direct effect, for example, EQ, gate, compressor, flanger (dynamics). This signal is therefore changed by this effect and then returned to the channel with its effect added. Auxiliaries on the other hand are a slightly different kettle of fish. They usually come after an insert on the signal path (if you have used one, that is), and takes two simultaneous pathways; one with the original signal and the other an aux. Signal.

Auxiliaries

An auxiliary works as a bus and can host signals from other channels therefore the same effects can be added to several channels, for instance, a reverb or delay. This aux. effect has to be treated like any other bus, thus, the level of the signal being sent to the effect has to be controlled. The resultant signal is the direct (original) and aux effect together.

Taken from: http://music.tutsplus.com/articles/encyclopedia-of-home-recording-auxiliary-send–audio-13423

Once you have got the hand of how there fundamentals work towards diverting and splitting signals half the battle is won; the fun bit is using them to your advantage. A good example is in post production where several channels can be aux. Sent to a reverb unit to provide an acoustic environment for the actions on screen.

]]>https://mediapretty.wordpress.com/2014/12/14/inserts-vs-auxiliaries/feed/0pkhepinsertsaux sendSound categories: Sound Source organising , made easyhttps://mediapretty.wordpress.com/2014/12/10/sound-categories-sound-source-organising-made-easy/
https://mediapretty.wordpress.com/2014/12/10/sound-categories-sound-source-organising-made-easy/#respondWed, 10 Dec 2014 23:04:32 +0000http://mediapretty.wordpress.com/?p=144Continue reading Sound categories: Sound Source organising , made easy]]>Today I’ve been looking over spotting sheets for planned and recorded sounds for a post production project I’m working on. And I realised how handy it would be to have a table of sound types for students and enthusiasts new to the world of audio/video technology; so I made one:

Sound

Description

Diegetic

Any sound the characters on screen can hear, i.e. dialogue.

Non-diegetic

Sounds the audience can hear but not the characters, i.e. narration, canned laughter.

Non-simultaneous

Sounds that take place depicting an event that isn’t happening on screen. For example, reading out a letter, like someone is writing it while onscreen someone is doing something completely different, but the letter itself relates to the person on screen.

Direct

Sounds recorded at the time of filming.

Synchronous

Sound that complement the movement of the character on screen.

Post synchronising

Dubbing, Foley, effects all recording in post production, usually in sync with the film itself.

Off screen

Sound used to describe what’s going on at the time but emphasising the onscreen action with a different exploit, usually to draw focus the important entity.

These are all key sources for planning audio post production, not only do they assist with spotting, but colour coordinating types of sound facilitates an organised Mix down for that final master.

]]>https://mediapretty.wordpress.com/2014/12/10/sound-categories-sound-source-organising-made-easy/feed/0pkhepFoley: bizarre techniques for extraordinary soundshttps://mediapretty.wordpress.com/2014/12/10/foley-bizarre-techniques-for-extraordinary-sounds/
https://mediapretty.wordpress.com/2014/12/10/foley-bizarre-techniques-for-extraordinary-sounds/#respondWed, 10 Dec 2014 11:55:25 +0000http://mediapretty.wordpress.com/?p=141Continue reading Foley: bizarre techniques for extraordinary sounds]]>Foley is an amazing technique of control, a sound designers attribute to emphasizing or oppressing intensity in a film. It’s an aspect unknown to many film audiences but an imperative, and personally, the most exciting, part of post production.

Foley is usually performed by a Foley artist using several Foley props, the props can be near enough anything as long as they make the sound required, or as close as possible. The technique is typically performed whilst watching the film itself so the FX’s can be recorded in time, a good example of this is the recording walking on different surface.

The inventive side of Foley enables artists to use uncharacteristic props for effects, for example, snapping celery for a broken bone, or slapping raw meat for, fist fights. But the creativity doesn’t end there; my colleges and I have sent numerous evening using various audio workstations reversing, EQing, stretching sounds to get that perfect Foley effect.

Foley is needed in most film and program making, whether it’s needed for emphasising a fall in a comedy or elaborating and explosion on a thriller. Even the most discrete sound like a leather coat squeaking with movement can demonstrate the intensity of the silence in the scene itself.

Here’s a fabulous short film regarding the sound design for Star Wars Episode II, with thanks to mdfilmmakingvideos.

]]>https://mediapretty.wordpress.com/2014/12/10/foley-bizarre-techniques-for-extraordinary-sounds/feed/0pkhepThe sonic Spectrumhttps://mediapretty.wordpress.com/2014/12/07/the-sonic-spectrum/
https://mediapretty.wordpress.com/2014/12/07/the-sonic-spectrum/#respondSun, 07 Dec 2014 10:10:27 +0000http://mediapretty.wordpress.com/?p=134Continue reading The sonic Spectrum]]>I’m currently working tirelessly in the studio, and on other digital work stations, polishing off the sound design for an animation. As this is my first audio post production task, without a band in sight, I’ve been somewhat surprised at the transferable sonic components used. As a general rule, the basics to watch out for in both live band recording and audio post production are time keeping, acoustic environments, blend, volume, and balance as a whole. But the entity that has exasperated my week has been EQing and making good use of the sonic spectrum. Although equalising has never been my strongest attribute in the audio world, I’d like to say I’m pretty confident balancing out a standard live recording, however, present me with ADR, foley, FX, atmospheric sounds and music, within a 5.1 mix-down; I start to panic. But never underestimate a woman on a mission; I have decided to break down the sonic spectrum, for those who are new to the audio game and those who need want to develop a good contrast between sounds.

Below is the audio spectrum; humans can hear between 20 to 20 KHz, which slightly decreases with age. Although pitch detection isn’t liner we can recognises octave changes with frequencies that are doubled or halved, this still leaves us with a large scope, but it also means recording in different, but close frequency bands can easily masked or sound messy:

Once we understand the concept of the spectrum, instrument and vocal ranges can then be incorporated:

Once you have a reasonably good idea of where you’re sounds are on the spectrum, the hard part is over, and you can cut and boost to adjust. With multiple frequencies in multiple tracks, for example post production, things can be slightly trickier, nevertheless, there are lots of other effects spectrum’s that have been created to help:

Using the sonic spectrum not only familiarises you with the frequencies you are using but enables creativity; you never know what a difference a cut or boost can make. In addition you should be mindful of boosting in reference of over compensating, which I will talk about another time.